Appreciation for the people making Custom Letters. Inspiration for everyone else. A whole lot of great work.

Last day of our Best of 2012 featuring 500+ more images. I’m sure I’ve missed some people, so please email me with omissions and anything else at: lettercult /AT/ gmail.com. I will merge all three days into one post tomorrow.

Appreciation for the people making Custom Letters. Inspiration for everyone else. A whole lot of great work.

Welcome to our fourth-annual snapshot of the Year in Custom Letters. We’ve separated it into three days.

Today, Day Two, features another batch of 550 images. The good news — there’s a Day Three, and it will be EDIT: *MONDAY*, with work coming from Erik Marinovich, Shoe Meulman, Luca Barcellona, and many more.

If you submitted work early, you’ll probably see it today. If you submitted a bit later, look for it on Day Three. We had more submissions than last year — big thanks to everyone who took the time to do that. About 20 percent of the Best Of will have come from submissions.

Also, be aware that our host (dreamhost) has been having issues, so if the site doesn’t respond…it’s probably because dreamhost is down. Apologies in advance.

• SUBMISSION FORMAT: .png or .jpg, 600 pixels wide, 72 dpi. We’ll confirm receipt of your submissions. There is no limit to the number of submissions you can make, but please edit yourself, and pick your BEST WORK. Please include a link to your site. And please do not send work completed before 2012, or work from 2013.

• Person of the Year. We are going to retire this annual thing, among some other changes. The good news is, I now have some help to make some site changes and we’ll be doing more features and profiles in 2013, in a simpler format.

Appreciation for the people making Custom Letters. Inspiration for everyone else. A whole lot of great work.

Remember, we’re breaking this up into several days. Day 2 and Day 3 will be next week, days TBD.

• Day 2 will feature work from 2011 Person of the Year Erik Marinovich (see his article below), 2010 POY Shoe Meulman, and 2009 POY Jessica Hische, among dozens of others.

• Day 3 will be anchored by the prolific hand-lettering of Chris Piascik, Carolyn Sewell, and Jay Roeder. Lots more to come.

• If your work is not featured on Day 1, don’t fret, each day is packed with Custom Letters, so yours is probably coming soon, but feel free to email. Questions, concerns, worries, errors, omissions, broken links, did I miss your work, please email brian (bj): lettercult /AT/ gmail.com

Apologies for the delay with this.

Also, again, remembering the late Doyald Young, who died in 2011. Without his inspiration, this site would not exist. RIP Doyald.

NOW THAT 2011 IS OVER, IT’S TIME to crawl out of hibernation, and begin sorting through the best and brighest Custom Letters of the year!

Our Best of 2010—Day 1 and Day 2—featured more than 900 images, our Top 10 lists, and our Person of the Year. Last year, we scoured hundreds of personal sites, yet took in a relatively small number of submissions.

We hope to get more subs this year, so if you or anyone you know create Custom Letters, please pass on the link! We don’t want to miss anyone.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

The Custom Letters category includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and original type design. It could also involve making letters with sticks and berries, or carving letters into a tree. It’s an elastic category.

The Custom, in this instance, means built from scratch; we ARE NOT looking for customization—a type treatment or 3d treatment—of an existing typeface. Again, no type treatments.

A few other things:

• The deadline to submit is Wednesday, February 1, midnight Pacific time. We will be publishing our Best Of later in February.

• E-MAIL ADDRESS: lettercult [AT] gmail.com. You can submit for yourself or others. You can include the actual files or submit links. Please put 2011 SUBMISSION in the SUBJECT FIELD.

• SUBMISSION FORMAT: .png or .jpg, 600 pixels wide, 72 dpi. We’ll confirm receipt of your submissions, but we won’t contact you after that. There is no limit to the number of submissions you can make, but please edit yourself, and pick your BEST WORK. Please include a link to your site. And please do not send work completed before 2011, or work from 2012.

• ALPHABATTLE LETTERS: The Alphabattle wrap-up will be separate so INDIVIDUAL LETTERS will stay separate from the Best Of.

• If you don’t submit, there’s still a good chance we’ll find your piece if you’ve uploaded it somewhere—Flickr, Behance, etc. However, if it’s on your site, and it’s unclear what year you created it, we won’t include it.

• We are aware of certain styles that get copied. If you’re aping the current Letterer of the Moment, we’d ask you to please, find something original to submit.

• If you or someone you know are not on our list of LetterMakers, email us.

Finally, we always get questions about why a Best Of would include so many images—why don’t you narrow it down to a manageable number so it’s truly a BEST OF. Well, the continuing goal is to introduce people to Custom Letters, and to celebrate those who are making Custom Letters. It’s as simple as that. Our aim to be inclusive, not exclusive.